vj software / photomosh alternative
photomosh alternative
If you are looking for a Photomosh alternative, the honest first answer is Mosh-Pro — Photomosh’s own paid desktop version, $49 once or $24 a year, browser and desktop, with MIDI and audio-reactive effects. Same people, same lineage. Start there.
kott is the alternative when you want a live instrument instead of an effect pass. It has no NDI, no Syphon and no virtual camera, so it cannot feed video to another application; it is not a mixer or a media server; and the look is narrow on purpose. If any of that is disqualifying, stop reading — it will not fit your rig at any price.
What it does instead: reads your MIDI clock at 24 PPQN, takes a live camera in the browser, and lets you patch onset, downbeat, build/drop and your own EQ bands onto individual effect parameters. $39 until 13 September, once, for the web studio and the macOS app together.
01/ INSTEAD
when Mosh-Pro is the better buy
- You want the tool Photomosh turned into. Mosh-Pro is its paid desktop version by the same people; if what you liked was Photomosh specifically, that continuity is worth more than anything on this page.
- You want a desktop install on Windows. Mosh-Pro runs on the desktop; kott's offline native build is macOS only, and on Windows kott means a browser tab.
- You are buying an effect library rather than an instrument. kott plays one visual language — dither, halftone, print, ASCII, engraving, glitch, CRT — and deliberately does not reach past it.
- $24 a year suits you better than paying once. Mosh-Pro offers that; kott has no subscription at all, so if a yearly cost is easier to sign off than a single charge, kott cannot match it.
02/ DIFFERENCE
where kott is a different instrument
- the clock, not just the beat
- kott reads MIDI realtime clock off the port — 0xF8 at 24 PPQN, with start, continue and stop — and derives BPM and quarter-note phase from your clock rather than guessing at one. The beat tracker has three modes: autocorrelation off the audio, a fixed BPM set by hand, or locked to that external clock. In a set where the tempo is already decided by something else, the visuals follow it instead of chasing it.
- audio routed onto any parameter
- This is the part worth reading twice. kott does not have a set of audio-reactive effects; it has an audio bus you patch. Spectral-flux onset, a phase-locked beat pulse, downbeat on the first beat of every bar, build and drop detection, tempo tracked from 60 to 180 BPM, bass/mid/treble, and up to eight EQ bands you define yourself with their own window, gain and gate. Any of those signals lands on any effect parameter through a modulation node with its own gain and smoothing. The filter moves to the beat because you wired the beat to the filter.
- hardware, in a browser
- WebMIDI, so a controller works in the browser with nothing installed. A nanoKONTROL2 map ships with it, and any control MIDI-learns onto any parameter.
- a live camera as the source
- Camera and mic are processed on the device and nothing uploads — which is what makes a live camera usable at all in a browser tool.
- one price, both surfaces, and print output
- The licence covers the web studio and the macOS app together, and the app runs fully offline for venue wifi. Stills come out as PNG or as vector paths for print and plotters, which is a different job from video and the reason some people buy it.
03/ FAQ
questions
- What is the best Photomosh alternative?
- Mosh-Pro, if you want the same thing done properly — it is Photomosh's own paid desktop version, at $49 once or $24 a year, and it runs in the browser and on the desktop with MIDI and audio-reactive effects. kott is the alternative if you want a live instrument rather than an effect pass: MIDI clock lock, a live camera, and audio signals patched onto individual effect parameters. Hydra is free and open source if you would rather write code than turn knobs.
- Is kott cheaper than Mosh-Pro?
- Slightly, and it should not be the reason you choose. Mosh-Pro is $49 once or $24 a year. kott is one payment covering both the web studio and the macOS app, with no subscription. At that distance price is noise; pick on whether you want an instrument you play live or an effect suite you apply.
- Can kott do everything Photomosh does?
- No, and the shape of the gap matters more than its size. kott has no NDI, no Syphon and no virtual camera, so it cannot route video into another application. It is not a mixer or a media server: no clip grid, no cue list, no timeline. And the look is narrow by design — dither, halftone, print, ASCII, engraving, glitch and CRT. If you want 3D, generative geometry or procedural systems, this is the wrong instrument.
- Does kott work on Windows?
- In a browser, yes — the web studio needs only WebGL2. The offline native build is macOS only, so on Windows there is no app to install and no NDI either way.
- Do I have to pay to try it?
- No. Every effect previews free with no account, and a free set exports without paying. The rest need the one-time licence.
04/ NEXT
the rest of the field
Mosh-Pro is one of eight tools on the comparison page, next to Resolume, VDMX, TouchDesigner, Synesthesia, Magic and Hydra — with real prices, and the same “buy the other one when” list applied to each.